This shouldn’t begin or end at conferences, it needs to trickle down to the very grassroots, the local meetings, and we need to examine how and what form our engagement entails. That is why I was happy to see the idea of engagement being debated and it is a welcoming sight to see it being brought to the fore, but what now?

The Labour Party should be seeking to actively engage as many members as possible, and I believe our CLP has the golden opportunity to lead the way on this. After all the more members that engage with the party, the stronger the party is, the more robust and active the membership and the more in tune our politics will be with its membership – we may even see membership figures rise as we truly reflect their wishes.

What practical steps can we implement as a CLP to achieve this?

Carry out research into engagement

App

Livestreaming

Online member engagement

Open up debates

Firstly for us to make informed decisions as a CLP we need to know why our members engage, what is important to them when they engage, and what is likely to make them engage with the processes more. To this end we should set up a review of our engagement practises, and actively seek out members with low engagement, in order to get a clear picture of the engagement landscape – this will inform us going forward, and help us formulate a clear and robust engagement strategy.

Smart phones are increasingly in use and we could incorporate this in to our engagement strategy, on a very basic level – we can have a local CLP app which alerts members to meetings, gives them access to agendas, minutes and provides alerts of local LP events. We could however take this much further and provide motion alerts, a platform to debate motions (prior to meetings), access to meetings in real time and even include some form of voting mechanism within the app.

Livestreaming our meetings brings the meeting to the living room, the kitchen, in fact anywhere could play host to the Labour Party meeting. What would happen if every LP member attended a meeting? We wouldn’t know what to do. It is impossible for everyone to attend a meeting, it is logistically impossible and impractical for us to facilitate it as a CLP. Livestreaming is the answer to this dilemma, so that wherever you are, whatever you are doing you can witness the meeting, and hopefully actively take part. It provides us with a new platform to engage with our members, members that previously couldn’t attend meetings.

Online member engagement with politics is the future, whether we lead on this or not the internet is changing how people interact with each other – politics is playing catch up. We could use this technology to our advantage, we can talk to each other in real time, we could even cast and count votes completely electronically, we could have people voting from their homes. We can use social media to engage with a wider audience, post up motions, have lively debates on there. The more we embrace the technology the more doors it will ultimately open for us going forward, and the more avenues of engagement we will have to explore.

We all know how it goes, we are at a meeting and we hastily debate a motion before quickly voting on it, and sometimes this doesn’t give the debates the attention they deserve. Obviously we cannot debate until the end of time, but we can take a more proactive approach to debates, using some of the methods already mentioned. This would ultimately make meetings quicker, because a majority of the debating would have already happened, but it also opens the debates up to a longer process and provides more time to assess before voting. We can debate on the Facebook forum, through the app, through email chains – ultimately creating greater scrutiny of any motion that is being passed.

To summarise, I welcome the party looking in to engagement, but we should be looking at the format of meetings, what technology we could incorporate, and all avenues of engagement. The meeting shouldn’t be the only engagement with the party, we need to open it up, we need to empower members and we ultimately need to create a vibrant membership – how we actually conduct business is equal importance. These things haven’t changed in over one hundred years, the world is a completely different place now, e-platforms are in the ascendancy. Either we move with the times, or the times will move without us – either way the tyranny of the attendee is going to come to an end.

So Owen Smith gets elected Labour leader with a narrow margin, what happens now? Are all the Labour Party problems simply going to evaporate? Now with Corbyn and his thuggish supporters thrown into the wilderness, are we going to return to the strategies put forward in 2010 and 2015? Or is there going to be a new vision?

First things first it is highly likely we will see the biggest drop in membership in party history, in fact the membership will completely implode as hundreds of thousands rip up their cards, foaming and angry that their political voice has effectively been silenced. The bitterness towards Labour felt in Scotland becoming full blown alienation, while like the White Walkers in Game of Thrones it will slowly spread south, winter would not be coming, it would have arrived. So we will see a significant drop in membership, and a lot of bad blood as hundreds of thousands of people are left with a bitter taste in their mouths.

No doubt these now disenfranchised and angered voters and supporters will seek new representation, so maybe a second Green surge – or a new party will emerge. Which will tackle Labour from the left and ride on the back of resentment that is going to be felt against the Labour Party and its elite.

Labour seeking to appeal to the falling UKIP vote (UKIP clearly peaking and now on the decline), begin ramping up the immigrant rhetoric. After all they have to appeal to peoples concern on immigration (a line we keep hearing from them). In an environment of rising xenophobia and hate crime in a post brexit country, we see a Labour party that far from standing as a beacon against xenophobia, starts adding fuel to the racist fire (that mug anyone?). This of course alienates some of Labours BAME vote, with them seeking representation elsewhere, after all why would they stick around in a party which is effectively becoming a watered down UKIP with its immigration policy and rhetoric.

Then we have the unions, trade unionists on the most part being wholly behind Corbyn, will either continue a civil war, running campaigns against right wing Labour. Or as some were doing prior to Corbyn’s election seeking to leave the party behind, if a new party is formed out of the ashes of a Corbyn defeat, they could be integral in setting it up, or supporting it. Labour’s union support will clearly be rocked by the coup, and no doubt there will be a lot of angry and bitter trade unionists. The argument of the left sticking with Labour will become an extremely bitter pill to swallow, when after we had a left wing leader democratically elected, they plotted, undermined and removed him. So justifying support when the disaffiliation motions start cropping up, is going to get more and more difficult. It will become even more difficult if this next thing happens…

Owen Smith once getting elected through appealing to the left wing base, after all Corbyn has shifted the narrative in the Labour Party back to the left, no longer has to pander to the left wing support. There being no way he can be removed, with the PLP rallying around him and shoring up his position. He begins coming up with reasons why he cannot follow through with the Corbyn policies he has stolen, he cannot follow through with x,y,z and he brings in a whole selection of policies and rules he kept quiet about. Chief among them will be changing the election rules, and the membership rules in general. Those Labour members who didn’t leave in disgust, will be pushed out in a great left purge, the smokescreen being that they want to stamp out abusive behaviour in the party.

We see a softening of the media towards the party, after all there will no longer be a core group of Labour MPs constantly briefing the media against the party. So the sections of the media that were hostile to Corbyn will shower praise onto Smith, and we will see Smith court the likes of Murdoch, and become just the same as any other wannabe politician. Winning is more important than principles, and if to win we have to get on our knees and play with Murdochs balls, then that is what we shall do! While this is going on there will be a huge backlash against Smith and Labour on Twitter and social media, as the youth vote abandon the party in droves.

Then we come to Labour’s core support who have clearly rallied around Corbyn, and want the party to go in the direction Corbyn is calling for the party to go in. We will see (only online the media won’t report it) loads of stories of people “never going to vote Labour again,” “voted Labour all my life, but not after this.” The amount of non-voters in the next election will be huge as millions of Labour supporters simply don’t turn out to vote for Smith, or they vote for a new alternative – maybe the Greens. This will of course hand the GE to the Tories, as the Tories always appeal to their core support.

Thus we come to the biggest contradiction, the strategies put forward in the failed 2010 and 2015 election of pandering to the Tory vote has one big flaw. If you have no foundation and no core support, you neglect your main base. When you neglect your main base, they either don’t turn out to vote, or vote for another party – so while you may gain 1 Tory voter with your centre right rhetoric, you will lose 2 Labour voters. Now it could be argued if that 1 voter was in a marginal seat then it doesn’t matter because of our electoral system, but if this is replicated on a huge scale, say for example what happened in Scotland – What happens then? Labour support will implode.

Thus Labour are wiped out, their core support abandoned them, many bitter at what the party has done and is doing. Unions leaving the party left right and center, and a new democratic socialist party rising to take its place. What will the point of the Labour party be again? It will have turned its back on its core support, turned its back on the people who created it, and ultimately disowned its own legacy. The future of this party is at stake and ultimately if it continues on a path to be Corporate Labour PLC, instead of The Peoples Labour Party, it makes you wonder just how it will be relevant, or survive? We may occassionaly get power as people get bored with the Tories, but what will be the point of power when we just continue where the out going Tory government left off?

Corbyn offers real change, a break from the neoliberal consensus and this is why we are seeing neoliberal forces rally round to take him down. Yet even if Corbyn is removed as leader people are beginning to stir, and removing him won’t put the cat back in the back. What Corbyn represents isn’t going away and if it isn’t allowed to manifest in the Labour Party it will manifest somewhere else. So Labour can ride the times and be part of the future, or they can resist them and be resigned to the dustbin of history.

Disclaimer: Obviously this is a work of fiction but some of the things mentioned here are likely to happen, some less likely – but if Smith gets elected there are many challenges he has to face. It is unlikely that he will complete or continue the project started by Corbyn and his supporters, and it is unlikely he will have the same levels of support as Corbyn. So while he may have more support among the PLP (and media circles) we will sacrifice the support where it matters on the ground, the grassroot support that actually gets us votes. The point of this piece is to serve as a warning more than anything, if you think voting for Smith is going to somehow make Labour “great again” – then you’re not paying attention. Go back and look at Labour’s recent history and why it got to where it is. Therefore even if Smith takes over there are going to be a whole load of problems, and challenges.

Go to any mainstream media website, open any news paper and no doubt you will find similar stories about Corbyn, he’s a friend of terrorists, a director of bullies, a mob leader that would make even Al Capone quake in his boots, he has an army of rabble doing his evil bidding up and down the country, terrorising his opponents, all in all he is a mean guy that is trying to control our politics through the use of force. This is actually the subtext that the media are trying to create, this is the narrative they are creating, and this is the reality they are trying to shape. This is all of course in an effort to discredit him, but it is very dangerous what they’re doing. It is now so obvious that the media do not report on reality, but try to shape it and create it.

Recent events really expose the dark nature of our media and how they seek to influence and shape our democracy, but it runs much deeper when they’re actually trying to shape our perceptions of the world around us. Just to highlight a few examples Malhotra having her office “broken into” in order to “intimidate her,” first and foremost if you have a key and you enter using a key it isn’t breaking in, secondly, if you’re the office manager, it’s your job to.. manage the office but finally and most importantly, it stopped being her office the moment she stepped down from her position in the shadow cabinet. But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of shaping a false reality and furthering your agenda.

When there is no actual evidence that it has anything to do with the Labour party or Corbyn, this hasn’t even stopped them. Look no further than Angela Eagle and her “constituency office window” being “bricked.” the media are leading us to believe this was done by some “Momentum thugs,” that Corbyn is bringing political violence to our streets. Yet there is no evidence what so ever that what happened had anything to do with politics, and if the Labour figures and media commentators know something, perhaps they should take it to the police. The worst thing is, it wasn’t even her office window! It was a stairwell in a shared office block! It gets even more slanderous when it was revealed she lied about closing her surgeries due to police advice, and pulling out of a press conference because of threats. But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of shaping a false reality and furthering your agenda.

They are calling on Corbyn to do more, they are all saying he isn’t doing enough (sounds familiar), but what more can he do? He has condemned it, he doesn’t conduct himself that way, he doesn’t bully, doesn’t insult, he doesn’t do personality politics. If members of the Labour party are breaking party rules, then they will be dealt with. What they’re hoping to do through this is alienate Corbyn from his support, they want him to come out against Momentum, and isolate him from his supporters in order to weaken him and bring him down. They hope that they can make him turn on his supporters, by constantly piling on the pressure, in effect what they’re doing is bullying, but what they’re doing is bullying, then victim blaming.

Alone these things could be harmless, but when taken together it is very worrying and completely destroys any notion of a free press in this country. There is no critical analysis taking place, they’re printing lies In order to discredit Corbyn supporters, they’re building up a narrative which seeks to undermine the ideas that he represents, because they cannot combat these ideas any way except on a underhanded level. This is all in an effort to essentially brainwash unengaged people that just digest the news. It is like we are living in a country where the press are operating with Goebbels handbook as a go to manual. They have even tried linking Corbyn to the killing of Jo Cox, or at least implied that it is somehow similar to the actions of his own supporters, which is completely and utterly distasteful and shameful.

There is no doubt in my mind that MPs will receive abuse, especially on the internet which is rife with trolls, but that isn’t just Corbyn rebels, that happens to all MPs. Corbyn has got death threats, he just hasn’t run to the press and tried framing it into a false moral panic. People are angry, and they are entitled to be angry at what the Labour MPs have done, they have acted in a dishonourable and underhand fashion, and ultimately put their own self interest before that of anybody else. But doesn’t it stink of hypocrisy? The fact that one of the MPs strategies for making Corbyn resign was literally bullying him into resigning? Or the fact the media have basically non stop bullied Corbyn? (LSE study revealed overwhelmingly negative stories in relation to Corbyn in the media).

Yet if there is any genuine abuse, it is getting lost behind all the fake smears, half truths and lies, and in the wake of the murder of a Labour MP by a far right extremist, surely it’s very dangerous to be doing that. This kind of narrative creation isn’t just reserved for Corbyn, but if they can successfully paint a long standing Labour MP, a pacifist, and an avowed peace and equality campaigner, as the complete opposite of all those things, then just think for a second what other narratives they are creating and what purpose it is all serving.